Kings of the Air: French Aces and Airmen of the Great War by Sumner Ian

Author:Sumner, Ian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027090; HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781473857339
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

‘Kill or Be Killed’ – 1917

‘Search out the enemy and destroy him’ – the Chemin des Dames

For the men of C64, 1 January 1917 brought an unexpected call to action. ‘It was one of those dreary grey days we spend hanging around because flying is a wash-out,’ reported ‘Jim’. ‘The NCOs’ mess was eagerly anticipating the chance to celebrate New Year’s Day together, when in walked the CO: “Airfield in an hour, gentlemen. We’re going in as low as we can to strafe the Navarin [Farm] trenches and the German cantonments at Dontrien.” Sensational news that raised few objections apart from a couple of chaps reluctant to interrupt their delicious lunch. We headed out to the airfield and hangars, gathering our teams as we went, excited by this sudden opportunity for action…. The lieutenant lifted his arm to signal our departure – like a charge of old – and the planes of C64 took off in perfect unison…. The weather was nasty, windy and wet and our progress painfully slow. The heavy, fleecy clouds were down to no more than 80 metres and stopped us climbing at all.’

The French reached their target and dived, strafing the enemy and spreading confusion. But then came ‘a terrible explosion under Lieutenant le Coz’s left wing … his red-winged Caudron went into a nosedive and an ominous blue flame shot from its left tank. [He’d been] hit! His dive grew steeper but it still looked as if he might land. H. and Sergeant C. followed him down, but he couldn’t level out in time and hit the ground hard, full throttle. An explosion, a huge black and red flame. Fire!’

Sergeant C. nursed his own aircraft 6 kilometres back to the French lines. Meanwhile Sergeant [Émile] G[rès] had also been hit: ‘petrol streamed from the holes in his tanks. Would the plane catch fire? The needle on the rev counter was falling. A bullet had knocked everything out.

‘“We can’t land here,” [Grès told his observer.] “We’re over their lines!”

‘“But we’ll be done to a crisp!”

‘“Can you see the barbed wire? That’s what we’re aiming for.”

‘The petrol was still leaking, vaporizing in the draught from the propeller and soaking the tail fins. One spark and it would send up the lot.’

Mercifully, Grès managed to limp across the wire and make it home. ‘And that,’ concluded ‘Jim’, ‘was how a French front-line squadron saw in the year 1917.’

Pilots normally used machine guns or bombs for this kind of ground attack, but Pierre Violet (MF55/N57) turned to his Le Prieur rockets during a mission in the Woëvre on 15 December 1916. ‘Dived on an enemy battery of 105s east of the Jumelles d’Ornes,’ he reported. ‘Fired my eight rockets from 150 metres.’ Two days later Violet was back in action, landing safely after his plane caught fire in the air. ‘Everything fine here,’ he ended his next letter. ‘Life is dull.’

‘The war affected our attitudes so profoundly that we came to accept these vile missions as normal,’ observed future film director Lieutenant Jean Renoir (C64).

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